María Gorete recalled that Lourdes then said: “When I grow up, I want to be like this sister.”
“That made us feel the call even more. We grew up with this idea, which matured, and we lived with this ideal,” María Gorete told ACI Digital, CNA’s Portuguese-language news partner.
Gorete recalled that her mother, Josefa Mendes de Souza, stated that she would not let her daughters leave the house unless it was to marry or to enter religious life. However, the family didn’t know how to make the triplets’ dream of entering religious life happen.
A priest who celebrated Mass in the region learned about their desire and contacted the superior of a convent in Salvador in Bahía state, who said she could take the young women. The first to follow the call to a vocation was Lourdes in 1984.
María Gorete recalled that Aparecida also wanted to go, but her mother “said that it wasn’t possible at that time, because we had to help with the younger siblings. And the mother [of the house] also helped the elderly people in the community, because in the countryside they needed help to put away firewood, since there was no gas or electricity, to wash clothes in the river, because there was no tank … So, we had to help her.”
A year after Lourdes went to the convent, Aparecida followed the same path and, after another year, it was Gorete’s turn.